The Lazy Genius Podcast - #271 - How to Fix Summer Dinners

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Yeah, we need to fix dinner, as in make it. But also summer dinners feel a little broken, especially around July, so we’re going to fix them that way, too! I love a pun.   Helpful Companion Links Hang out with me on Instagram @thelazygenius Bri McKoy’s Cooks Club Episode #97: One Simple Step that Changes Meal Planning Forever My Summer Meal Formula (from 2021) Download a transcript of this episode   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen. These little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hey there, welcome to the lazy genius podcast. I am Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 271. How to fix summer dinners. Yeah, we need to fix dinner as in make it, but also summer dinners feel a little broken, especially around July. So we're going to fix them that way too. I love a good pun. Let's start with the problem. I ask you. I ask you. I ask you. I ask you. I

you asked y'all on Instagram at The Lazy Genius what your biggest summer meal challenges were. And there were so many responses, like so many. And while there were definitely some specific ones, because we all have, you know, different needs and different lives that lead to specific problems, most of the responses fell into one of five categories. One, the lack of motivation. Two, the unpredictability of our summer schedules. three, you're tired of eating the same things over and over again, which I feel like that could be

true in any season, right? Four, your usual easy meals or your brainless crowd pleasers, as we call them around here, are better suited for cooler weather than in the summer. And five, it's too hot to turn on the oven. Seriously, the number of responses that were that verbatim, it's too hot to turn on the oven. It was so many. And I love it. We're all more or less in the same boat.

right? So we are going to talk about those five categories today. But before we do, I want to remind you of two very important things. First, we need to remember the lazy genius principle live in the season. The summer is a season for weird food patterns, right? It just is. A lot of those categories I mentioned are loosely rooted in the season, right? Motivation. It's hard to be motivated when it's hot outside, when schedules are unusual, when days are spent kind of active, and then by dinner you're out of steam when you're tired of eating the same things but don't know how to cook new meals that don't require an oven and aren't expensive and are also easy and that your kids will eat if you have kids. There are just a lot of things about this season in particular that play into our motivation.

the summer season impacts the predictability of our schedules, right? It makes it much more unpredictable, obviously. It impacts the repetition of our meals because it also impacts and depletes our brainless crowd pleasers. And then obviously the oven. It's just all connected. And the season itself, it's just so important for us to remember this, guys, the season of summer itself is a foundational contributor to your frustrations.

It just is. Now, that does not mean that we just have to stay frustrated because it's the summer. Oh, well, no, it's okay to be frustrated by those things. It's good to name what makes this crazy and be honest about whatever struggles we have because of our season. You could even be frustrated by the fact that those of us in the Western Hemisphere are talking about summer in this way and you're like, it's cold here, you know? We can name what our frustrations are, but we don't have to let those frustrations and struggles be in charge. Sometimes we can name the season we're in, we can be honest about it, maybe make a small change or two, which we'll get to in a minute,

but we can also relax a bit more into its difficulty because of the season we're in. Our tendency is to either ignore it all or change it all. And remember that as a lazy genius, we have a wide middle, right? We don't swing to those two extremes. So just remember that that food in the summer is in fact challenging. It just is. There are a handful of people in life stages where it's not, you know, maybe if you're single or you don't have kids and you have fewer preferences and to kind of manage, you have a bigger budget maybe. But even so, it's still a different season. So live in it. The summer season of food is not going to behave like the other three. So try not to force it into a shape it's not going to take, you know. Next, I want to remind you that

not everything can matter. I just named the five main categories that came from your responses, and you'll have offshoots of those or completely different challenges to add to the list. Me personally, the oven is less of a concern because I have and very much use our AC, but the other four categories, 100% are challenges for me too. And it's easy to try and fix them all, right? So here is your very important reminder that not everything can matter. the most. A lot can matter, but not equally. Okay. For example, of those categories, motivation, the seasonality of your brainless crowd pleasers, annoyed with repetition, the unpredictability of schedules. The one that matters most to me is the motivation. I already mentioned the oven doesn't

matter to me. I don't love repetition. Like, it's not my favorite, but also, like, whatever. It's mostly fine. I don't care that much. I can rally if we're eating a lot of things over and over again. I don't love the inconvenience of not being able to depend as much on soups and cold weather things, but it's also mostly fine and I can rally. I don't love that our schedules are inconsistent based on a long list of things, but it's mostly fine and I can rally. The thing that I cannot rally around, is my lack of motivation. Oh my goodness. And it's not even so much that I'm not motivated to cook. It's that I'm not motivated to make a decision. I don't want to choose. I don't want to pivot. I don't want to get off the couch and look in the fridge to figure out what we're going to do. So for me personally,

if I can specifically tend to that motivation piece because it's the one that matters most to me, the other challenges will ease up a bit. And they're less important. to me anyway. It's not that they're not important at all, except for the oven, but like, they have less importance. But they're still going to be impacted if I focus on the thing that is the most important. Does that make sense? It's going to be true for you. So remember that not everything can matter equally. And it's worth the effort to figure out what matters most to you in this season. that way you can invest the limited amount of energy that you do have at that one problem and then likely some of the others will fall into place okay so let's jump briefly into these five categories and we're

going to help you find like a path to at least some sort of partial solution let's start with the lack of motivation so many of the instagram responses were about having no energy no motivation no margin to choose dinner cook dinner even get out of the house to get groceries for dinner I think we're just like cardboard cutouts of ourselves by the end of the day. If that is you, and especially if motivation matters the most to you, here is a question you can ask. Do you have to be motivated? Is it important to you to stay on top of dinner?

To manufacture or reconfigure your motivation somehow because the end result of being motivated matters? Or can this be a season where you're going to be a season where you're going to be? you're lazy about motivation and you just like you eat a lot of cereal and hot dogs and box mac and cheese or whatever. Now of course no one wants to eat a lot of cereal and hot dogs and box mac and cheese. But if resting and not forcing yourself to be motivated does not matter more than the ease of cereal and hot dogs and box mac and cheese, you can be lazy about motivation. I'm giving you permission. I realize it's not ideal and it's not really. It's not really you what you want, but unless it's what you want the most, you'll just keep feeling bad about

not having any motivation. Does that make sense? So do you have to be motivated? And you can answer however you want to. Now let's say you do. Let's say motivation does matter the most to you. And it matters that you are motivated, right? Here are two other questions I want you to ask. First, what do you want to be motivated to do? It's not just dinner. That is too broad. So is it the cooking, the planning, the choosing, the literal getting off of the couch? What do you want specifically to be motivated to do and name that specific thing?

The smaller it is, the better. Remember, it's so much easier to solve smaller problems. So once you've named that, what's in the way of you having the motivation to do the thing that you need? Is it the time of day? Is it the expectations that you or your people have of what dinner is going to look like? Is it that you have too many choices? Too few choices. What is in the way?

Name that too. And now you can probably more easily see a solution. So for me, the thing I'm not motivated to do that I want to be motivated to do is to choose. I don't like to choose, especially at the end of the day, or when we've gotten home from the pool at 5 o'clock, or I've been working all day in the office. And then the first thing the kids say when I walk in is what's for dinner. So this is why I love a meal plan, right? if I batch the choices at a time where I am more motivated to make them, which is not between the hours of

four and five o'clock every day, I at least have somewhere to begin. If I have a meal plan, I have somewhere to begin. It is okay to me if those choices are repeated. It is okay if I need to swap something out because of those unpredictable schedules, right? But having a baseline of a plan, it really helps me. And planning at a time where I'm motivated to plan, even a little bit more than what I'm not, right? I don't have to be jumping around on a trampoline so excited to plan. This past week, for example, I did not plan. And I felt it.

I felt it. Every night I was like a walking, ugh. And we ended up getting a lot of fast food. Not because I wasn't motivated to cook, but, because I wasn't motivated to choose. So I don't need meals made in the morning to help my dinner time cooking motivation. That is not my particular issue. I do not need to be motivated to cook. I need the choice to be made ahead of time because I need to be motivated to choose. Does that make sense? That's why a small problem is more helpful because then you know where to channel your energy.

So what do you specifically need motivation to do? What is in the way of that motivation? And then what small thing can you try to help that along a little bit? Maybe some of these more specific categories that we're about to get to. We'll give you some ideas to. We'll be right back. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art.

I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness, podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. All right. Let's move on to the next category, the unpredictable summer schedule. Similar to the motivation question of do you need to be motivated, I'd like you to ask yourself, do you need predictability? Is that important? And is it the most important thing above everything else? The answer is yours to name and whatever you say counts, right? If your home and family have been going through really hard transitions during this first half of the summer, maybe you want to prioritize connecting over a meal.

maybe that predictability, it really, really matters for the health and connection of your family. Or you might say, I guess it doesn't really matter that much. It's not great, but it's just the season. Either way is great and anything in between, okay? Now, let's say that having some kind of predictability, it really, really does matter. You want to add predictability to your life in some way. Here's what I would like for you to think about. What in your life, when it comes to meals, is predictable right now?

Maybe summer schedules make dinner unpredictable, but is breakfast predictable or lunch, having dessert or something after dinner? Maybe you can experience some of that regularity that you're craving, even amidst like an irregular summer schedule, by shit. shifting the meal that gets the most attention. So maybe this summer, your big meal is breakfast or lunch. Like that's where you and your people can put effort because you're together and you have motivation to do it or whatever the case may be. And then the other meals can have the same kind of casualness or repetition as breakfast and lunch often do in the other three seasons of the year.

Sometimes we have seasons where dinner does not have to be the main meal. So put the predictability somewhere else for a season if that seems like it would help. Another way to approach the importance of predictability is to see if there is something about the unpredictability that can be tweaked a bit to make it just a little bit more predictable. Maybe not like a machine, you know? We don't need you to have a life of a machine, but just something that makes it a little bit more regular than it is now. For example, if the unpredictability is because your job schedule varies from week to week, because you're a nurse, or because your job is understaffed and you don't know when you'll be asked to

work overtime, or maybe you have teenagers with jobs, you have the same unpredictability in their work schedules, what can you notice or tweak to make that irregularity a little bit more palatable? not completely transformed, just a little bit easier. Maybe you notice that despite the crazy work schedules, no one seems to work on Sundays. So you could prioritize summer Sunday dinner. You only have a few left, you know, there aren't that many left. But maybe you can spend your energy there.

Make that predictable. Maybe you notice that your family's hunger levels are irregular and they don't sync up. That can be really frustrating. You're trying to feed everyone, like someone said, at 4.30 and 8 o'clock. That was one of the comments. And they're like, I have to feed people. And we either eat at 4.30 or we eat at 8 o'clock. And you can't seem to get everyone on the same page, right? That's so frustrating. So maybe the tweak is shifting the expectation that everyone will be

hungry for the meal. But you're still going to sit together for a bit. The leftovers can work for someone for a late dinner or lunch the next day or maybe you just make a little bit less food. But you could tweak the expectation of how much everyone eats when you actually sit down together. I know that's strange, but that's a small tweak even for the next month or two that could help. So you see what I mean? Just tiny, tiny tweaks. So pay attention to the irregularity and make your own regular thing to make it a little bit easier. Or you can tweak some part of your unpredictability to make it just a little bit more regular.

Okay, let's do the same thing for repetition. And another way of thinking about this is feeling like you're in a rut, right? Does a rut matter enough to use the energy to get out of it? It might not. It might not. You're like, I'm in a rut. We're just going to be in a rut for a little while. It's fine.

Like, that's fine. But if it is not fine, right? If it does matter a lot that you get out of a rut, what are some ways that you can make the problem of repetition smaller. Sometimes a rut is not food. Sometimes a rut is indecision. You feel like you're in a rut because you're having to choose from things that you do not love making. It's not really about the food, but about the decision. But it could also be about the food. So try to make that smaller. recently I joined Bree McCoy and her cooks club, which is a great thing that you should check out, by the way, for a book club Zoom kind of gathering because her cooks club had read my book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen for part of their book club and their cooks club, which was so fun.

And so I joined her group on a Zoom. And we did kind of a rapid fire problem solving session. and one woman asked for more ideas for easy summer meals. Sure, that is something we're all looking for. Absolutely. That as we talked, I noticed that she was bringing some like all or nothing energy to her question and that she wanted literally every option of a great summer meal ever. Guys, we can't do that.

That is big machine genius thinking, where you assume that you need a dozen new recipes or you have to cook something new almost every single day to not feel like you're in a rut. That is not feasible or sustainable or realistic. So make it smaller. Find one new recipe you want to try. Find one day that makes sense to make a new food. You do not need to shake every single day up to have your meals feel shaken up. One small change way less often than you probably realize it's likely going to make a difference in your feeling like you're inner red. And listen, small changes are easier to maintain, right?

If you say, I'm tired of eating the same things all the time, get ready, fam, we're going to eat some new recipes around here. And then you like, you have this intention of you're just going to make a new recipe every single day or like three a week or whatever it is and then you crap out after one try because it's just too big that's kind of the equivalent of big black trash bag energy when you go through your house you throw everything out but you're doing it with meals instead so start small what is one way that you can interrupt the repetition or the right one way next up is the seasonality of brainless crowd pleasers now just to recap a brainless crowd pleaser is a meal that takes very little

brain power for whoever is cooking it. That doesn't mean it's easy. It just means it's brainless for whoever's making it, right? And then crowd pleasing is like it's generally fine for whoever you're feeding it to, right? Now, as we talk about the seasonality of brainless crowd pleasers, I'm also going to grab that fifth category of the oven being too hot in the summer. Those two things are actually fairly connected. Okay. So here's what I want us to do here. Yes, you can absolutely approach this in the same way as we did the other things, the other categories. But I also want you to have some ideas, you know? I mean, I love permission, but we also need practical stuff, like actual recipes. So here's what we're going to do. Over on Instagram, I have the time

that you're listening to this, even if you listen to this like super early, I have already posted a place on Instagram at The Lazy Genius where people can share their favorite non-oven summer meal. Okay? So it's everybody's singing. singular favorite. Even if you find one idea in those comments, you will be better off than you are now, right? And probably better off than even if you find 10 ideas because there's not much summer left. And also 10 ideas is a lot harder to put into your life than just one. Okay? So I will be sharing some kind of like specific kind of recipe meal ideas on Instagram because, you know, stuff just kind of lives longer there and it's easier to reference than it is here in the podcast episode. We'll also put some links to my past

summer dinner cues and a few kind of recipe roundups we've done in the past so that you do have a collection of summer recipe resources. I want you to have that. But the most important thing to remember here for this category of the seasonality of brainless crop leasers and you don't want to turn on the emmon is that you do not need every idea. You just need one. Maybe three. Start small. Even the smallest solution will make things easier than they are now. And this is our goal as lazy geniuses. Focus on what matters most and then try and make things just to touch easier than they are currently. Avoid that all or nothing, this or that, fix it all or burn it down mentality. One small change can make a difference. And then that is how you fix summer dinners. Okay, so before we go,

Let's celebrate our lazy genius of the week. This week it's Aaron Pigeon who sent this to me on Instagram. I wanted to share one of my favorite house rules that I hope will be my legacy, The Clean for 15. This is great for people with roommates, people with kids, and especially for vacations where you're staying in a home, a lake house, a beach house, etc. You pick a time, you set a timer for 15 minutes,

and you crank up some music like high-intensity music. I really love that specifically. that specificity, Aaron, it's like high intensity music. Then everyone cleans until the timer goes off. Anything counts as long as it's bringing order to the space. The rules are that you have to find something to clean the entire time. And when the timer goes off, you're done. No one will be forced to continue beyond the timer.

The transformation of a space in 15 minutes is magical. And almost anyone can get on board for that amount of time. Thanks for everything, Kendra. That is such a great idea, Erin. I'm guessing it's one that a lot of you listening have done before. or at least some sort of version, right, where you clean for a set amount of time to music. But I really, I really like the name. I know that that's really simple, but calling it clean for 15.

It rhymes, right? It has a ring to it. And it's a long enough amount of time. It's not just like a song. So it's like three and a half minutes. It's long enough of a time that a lot can actually get done. I also love the reminder that it can be used in various kinds. contexts like a vacation home. That is so simple and such a good reminder. So thank you, Aaron.

Great idea. Thank you for being the lazy genius of the week. All right, that's it for today, y'all. Thanks so much for listening. And be sure you're following me on Instagram so you can get some of the summer meal ideas this week, especially from each other. I'm the lazy genius, and I look forward to hanging out with you there. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch.

I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You, wherever you get your podcasts.